Everest Movie review

[BikerDude]

Saw it in 3d. It was pretty great.
It might be better for those that haven't read the book.
I knew exactly what would happen.
The big thing is that the actors appear to be actually on Everest.
I've seen the noteworthy checkpoints enough to recognize them.
The Hillary step in the movie is really the Hillary step. The summit is the summit.
The wonders of technology I suppose. They put the actors in the actual locations digitally I would assume.
One big difference was the scene when Anatoli Boukreev asks Jon Krakaur to help.
I was surprised that the movie did that.
There was an ongoing and heated battle between Krakauer and Boukreev over the events that happened. Krakauer is outspoken about being pissed over the movie.
Which incidentally is based on HIS book. 
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/28/jon-krakauer-into-thin-air-opinion-everest-movie
Full audio book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I-U6t5KH5U

Incidentally Reinhold Messner (the greatest mountaineer ever) has publicly taken the side of Jon Krakauer in this controversy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaWHdHPwkV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ZWAbVDq4U
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Messner

Putting that aside I'd say that the movie does a decent job of telling the story except that you don't quite get the feeling of disorientation that the book conveys.
The book makes the case that it was the result of a series of bad decisions which were all caused by hypoxia (lack of oxygen) which led to the disastrous outcome.
Still it's a very cool movie to see in 3d.

[jgiffin]

I had wondered if the movie was based on Krakauer's book. I have to see it now. The book was, like all his stuff, phenomenal. Catch "Into the Wild" and "Under the Banner of Heaven" if you haven't yet. He's perfected this modernist semi-fictional, semi-factual, genre.

[BikerDude]

I had wondered if the movie was based on Krakauer's book. I have to see it now. The book was, like all his stuff, phenomenal. Catch "Into the Wild" and "Under the Banner of Heaven" if you haven't yet. He's perfected this modernist semi-fictional, semi-factual, genre.

Well the movie company had bought rights to the book.It appears that they "mostly" based it on the book with the exception of a few scenes. The most notably being the scene when Krakauer is asked to render assistance. A claim that Krakauer has adamantly denied ever happened. And to be honest even if it did happen it would have been a bit odd to have asked Krakauer to help. Every other person who did go back up was either a Sherpa or an employee of either Rob Halls company or Scott Fishers. Krakauer was for all intents and purposes a paying customer. He was well known to be a competent climber but in reality it would have been absurd to have asked any of the group that had stumbled into high camp half dead to go back up the hill to render assistance. They were exactly the same as the people needing rescue. Krakauer, if it happened, would have been singled out simply because he was known to be an experienced climber. And in fact most of the professionals on the mountain had been urging Rob Hall to leave Doug Hanson behind and save himself. There really is, there is little that can be done at that point short of perhaps bring oxygen up to the stranded climbers. This had been tried by the sherpas who gave up and turned back in the face of hundred mile an hour winds. Bottom line is that above the balcony it is impossible to render any real assistance. People have to be able to get themselves down or they might as well be on the moon.
It almost seems like a dig at Krakauer personally to have included that scene which he has denied ever happened. There were only supposedly 2 people present, Boukreev and Krakauer and Boukreev is dead. And Krakauer had been critical of Boukreev for having earlier left the entire group behind and gone on his own back down to high camp. Boukreev's account looks to me like revenge for the criticism.

The core of the controversy[10] was Boukreev's decision to attempt the summit without supplementary oxygen and to descend to the camp ahead of his clients in the face of approaching darkness and blizzard. He was one of the first to reach the summit on the day of the disaster and stayed at or near the summit for nearly 1.5 hours helping others with their summit efforts, before returning to his tent by 5 pm on May 10, well ahead of the later summiters on his team.

Boukreev's supporters point to the fact that his return to camp allowed him enough rest that, when the blizzard had subsided around midnight, he was able to mount a rescue attempt and to lead several climbers still stranded on the mountain back to the safety of the camp. Boukreev's detractors say that had he simply stayed with the clients, he would have been in better position to assist them down the mountain, though it should be noted that every one of Boukreev's clients survived, including the three (Pittman, Fox, Madsen) that he rescued on May 11 after he had rested and overcome hypoxia. The only client deaths that day were suffered by the Adventure Consultants expedition, led by guide Rob Hall, who lost his own life when he did choose to stay and help a client complete a late summit rather than helping the client descend and replenish.[11]

I'm looking forward to the 2 movies based on "Under The Banner of Heaven".
I listened to the audio book. It was pretty amazing.
One is a documentary . "Profit's Prey" about Warren Jeffs. I think that is coming out October 10 on Showtime I believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNDeZLPd05s
And the other being a big studio production directed by Ron Howard. That is another case of him having sold the rights to the studio and then it goes into limbo. But it does have Ron Howard working on it supposedly. It's listed as under development on imdb.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1998372/